


baby steps

by labeledbones



Category: Eyewitness (US TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 09:11:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9432080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/labeledbones/pseuds/labeledbones
Summary: “I’m gonna do it.”“Seriously?” Philip asks, sitting up in bed, trying to shake the sleep from his head.The jump. The one Lukas has been trying to get back to ever since his first attempt was interrupted by a bullet.Some angst and fluff about Lukas and Philip trying to face their demons at the place where Lukas was shot.





	

His phone rings early, bringing Philip out of the dream he keeps having where he’s sitting with his mom in their kitchen and she’s shuffling a deck of cards, grinning at him around her cigarette. That’s the whole dream. Just a whole night’s worth of this random image from his childhood. They used to play Go Fish to distract themselves from the fact that they’d eaten old packages of ramen again for dinner. He remembers his stomach rumbling but also he remembers laughing a lot. His mom always tried to cheat. 

At the very least he’s stopped having the nightmare where she’s standing in front of him and suddenly gets ripped away by something dark and unseen and he wakes up sweating and yelling out for her. 

“Hello,” he mumbles into the phone, rubbing at his eyes. 

“I’m gonna do it.” 

It’s Lukas, his voice full of energy even though it’s - Philip pulls his phone away from his ear to look at the time - 5:30 in the morning. But Lukas always has this kind of energy in the morning, used to getting up early for races or getting up early because his dad doesn’t believe in sleeping past 6:30 when there’s always work to be done. 

“Seriously?” Philip asks, sitting up in bed, trying to shake the sleep from his head.

The jump. The one Lukas has been trying to get back to ever since his first attempt was interrupted by a bullet. 

“Yeah, I think today’s the day. I can just, like, feel it in my gut.” Philip pictures Lukas pacing around his bedroom, bouncing on his toes, smiling against the phone. 

“This is huge,” Philip says. He feels his own happiness filling him up and it’s such a rare thing these days that he feels a little dizzy with it at first, has to hold on to the side of the bed as the warmth figures out a place to settle in his gut. And it’s only ever Lukas who can get him to this feeling now. He isn’t sure if that’s a good or a bad thing, but it’s true. 

Lukas is still talking. “I had a dream that I made that jump finally and I could feel the bike catching the air and I could feel the wheels touching down on the other side. It’s, like, foreshadowing or something.” 

Philip laughs, pushing a hand through his disheveled hair. “More like a premonition, but yeah.” 

“You always know what I mean to say,” Lukas says warmly in that way where they’re kissing even if they’re on the phone, even if their lips are miles apart. 

“So, the jump? Today?” Philip asks, standing up and searching the floor for somewhat clean jeans. “Right now?”

“As soon as possible, man, I don’t wanna lose this feeling,” Lukas says and Philip can hear him knocking around his room as he tries to get dressed while holding the phone. “I’ll pick you up in half an hour.” 

**

Philip sits out on the front steps waiting for Lukas. He’s thinking about the first time they went back to that spot. Lukas’ therapist had thought it would be good for him to go back, but to just go without his bike the first time. “She said baby steps,” Lukas told Philip. 

Baby steps meant bringing Philip along with him, holding his hand as they walked up over that hill. 

But it was Philip who couldn’t take it. Philip who started shaking as soon as he saw that pond. Philip who was throwing up in a bush after barely two minutes, Lukas’ hand on his back moving in big slow circles. He was shaking and crying and sat down right there in the dirt, and Lukas sat down next to him.

“Sorry, I just-” Lukas shook his head and reached for his hand. “I saw it happen again. I thought you were dead then. I mean, I assumed you were dead when I pulled you out of the water. You were dead.” He was crying again, messy but almost noiseless, his face pressed into Lukas’ shirt.

Lukas just held him until he calmed down. “I’m here,” he said. “I’m still here.” 

Philip wiped at his face with both of his hands. “Yeah,” he said, looking up at Lukas. “Yeah.” 

Lukas kissed him and Philip held onto his hands. 

“And, good news,” Lukas said, standing up. “I was able to come here without having a panic attack.” 

He held out a hand to pull Philip back up. “And you,” Lukas said as he pulled Philip into his side. “Had a totally understandable panic attack that I successfully coached you through. Julie’s gonna be so proud.” He was smiling at Philip and Philip felt himself smiling back. 

“Julie?” 

“She knows about my sex life. I should be able to call her by her first name.” 

Lukas was walking away, but Philip started after him. “Wait. What do you tell her about our sex life? Lukas?” 

**

Philip hears Lukas before he sees him, the sharp buzzing of the bike’s motor coming up the road. He jogs down the stairs to meet him at the bottom of the hill. 

The sky is purple and pink as the sun finally starts to come up. Lukas pulls off his helmet, shakes his hair out, and smiles at Philip in the bruise colored light. Philip kisses him quick, knowing that if he lingers at all they’ll be making out until Helen and Gabe are awake. 

Lukas pulls a thermos out of the backpack he’s got on. “Coffee,” he says, grinning at Philip. “I stole it from my dad so he’s gonna be pissed, but I figured you’d need it.” 

Philip takes the thermos and immediately takes a couple of grateful swallows. It’s weak and tastes a little like plastic but he feels the caffeine rush into his veins and groans. “God, I love you,” he says, climbing on the back of the bike. 

Lukas smiles. “What?” 

Philip realizes what he’s said. He hasn’t said it when Lukas could actually hear him. He isn’t afraid though, not of loving Lukas out loud, so he just says, “You heard me,” and shoves his helmet on. 

Lukas laughs. “Let’s go,” he says. 

He loves being on the bike with Lukas. When there’s nothing but the hum of the engine and his arms around Lukas’ waist and the wind. All of his thoughts disappear and he moves his hands up to feel Lukas’ heart beating. He feels completely safe there. 

Lukas is saying something, head craning over his shoulder as they come to a stop. Philip doesn’t hear him at first. “What?” 

Lukas cuts the engine and everything goes so still and quiet, just the sound of the wind cutting through the trees. 

Lukas climbs off the bike, takes off his helmet and looks at Philip. “I said I fucking love you, too, idiot.” He pulls Philip’s helmet off for him and tosses it to the ground so he can kiss him. 

When Lukas pulls back, Philip blinks at him slowly, feeling unhinged. He wonders when kissing Lukas will stop taking the breath right out of him. Or if it’ll always feel like the entire earth is falling away from them every time.

“Now, watch me make this sick jump and totally conquer all my fears.” 

**

They went back again, a couple of weeks after the first time. Lukas walking his bike over with him this time. He was just going to see what would happen. There was no pressure on him to actually make the jump right now, but Philip could tell he wanted to do it. Philip could tell he was beating himself up about it already, something tense in the set of Lukas’ shoulders and his jaw.

Meanwhile, Philip was just trying to be there without having another breakdown. He thought at least now that he knew it could affect him like that, maybe he’d be able to stop it from happening.

But as they approached the pond, Philip had the same cold feeling wash over him. That same sinking, dark feeling. Panic but also all too familiar grief. He tried to just keep moving forward, but his bones were suddenly heavy and stiff. 

Lukas stopped walking and turned to him. “Hey, if you don’t want to be here-”

Philip shook his head. “No, I need to be here. Just. Give me a minute.” He closed his eyes and focused on breathing, in and out, counting each breath, counting to ten on each inhale and exhale. And then he felt Lukas’ hands on his face and when he opened his eyes Lukas was staring right at him. So he put his hands on Lukas’ face too and held his gaze, saying, “Okay, okay,” and focusing on the way Lukas’ touch grounded him in reality, the reality where Lukas was alive and everything bad had already happened. He breathed in and out and said again, “Okay.” 

“You’re good?” Lukas asked, searching Philip’s face. 

“Yeah,” Philip said. “I’m good.”  Philip was so used to filming Lukas riding that he felt strange standing there just watching him. But Lukas didn’t need the added pressure of a camera and that wasn’t the point of today anyway. 

Lukas did a couple of laps in the surrounding field before turning his bike towards the ramp and the water. He waited there for a few minutes and Philip wanted to yell out to him to see if he was okay, but he didn’t want to interrupt Lukas’ focus.

Lukas finally made a start towards the ramp and was halfway up when suddenly he stopped, braking too hard, nearly throwing himself off of the bike. Even from where Philip stood, he could see the anger rising in Lukas, the way he hung his head, the way he was gripping the handlebars. 

Lukas turned around and went back to the bottom of the ramp. The same thing happened. He made it about three quarters of the way up and then just stopped. This time he climbed off the bike and let it fall over. Lukas started pacing up and down the ramp and Philip could hear him cursing as he kicked up clouds of dust. 

Then Lukas picked the bike up and went to the bottom again. “Come on,” Philip muttered under his breath, but again Lukas got so close to the top of the ramp and then just stopped. He turned the bike around and when he got to the bottom, he climbed off and threw his helmet to the ground. 

“Fuck!” Lukas yelled out into the vast nothing around them, the word echoing back to him. 

Philip made his way over to Lukas, approaching him slowly because he’d seen Lukas angry enough times to know he wasn’t always in complete control of himself. 

But when Lukas saw him, he started to cry and sat down on the ground. Philip sat next to him and didn’t say anything. “I should be able to do this,” Lukas said through gritted teeth. “But every time I got near the top of that ramp, it was like all the air went out of me and-”

Philip put a hand between Lukas’ shoulder blades and felt his body shake as he cried. “It’s okay,” he said. “You just gotta keep trying. Baby steps, right? We’ve been through hell. You were shot, Lukas. No one’s expecting you to just get back on your bike like nothing happened.” 

“You don’t get it,” Lukas said bitterly, pushing Philip away from him abruptly and standing up. 

Philip stood up too so they were standing face to face. Lukas’ eyes were dark and Philip knew he’d given himself over to his self-hatred and anger. He knew it was impossible to reach Lukas at this point, impossible to reason with him. Still he said, “Try me.” 

“Riding is what people know me for, my thing. If I can’t ride, then what am I to anyone? Just some _fag_?” He spit the word out angrily and looked away from Philip.

Philip went cold. “I know you don’t mean that, but I’m walking away right now.” 

He could hear Lukas calling after him but he didn’t turn around. 

He would forgive him later, because he always did. He would forgive him because Lukas would show up at his window in the middle of the night red eyed and he would kiss the hell out of Philip and say he was sorry over and over, say that sometimes he lost himself and didn’t know what he was doing or saying. Philip would forgive him because someone had to love Lukas if Lukas wouldn’t love himself. 

**

This morning Lukas is smiling when they get to the jump. Philip has a brief moment of panic wash over him when he sees it, but this time it goes away almost as quickly as it shows up. 

“You want me to shoot this?” he asks, pulling out his phone and wishing he’d thought to grab his good camera.

Lukas looks at him and looks at the jump and looks at the sun coming up over the trees. “Nah,” he says. “Let’s just let what happens happen.” 

Philip isn’t sure what’s got Lukas in this good of a mood. He thinks it must have been one hell of a dream Lukas had. “Yeah,” Philip agrees, stepping back from the bike.   “You’re not gonna give me a good luck kiss?” Lukas teases. 

Philip shrugs. “I mean, the first time we kissed, three guys were murdered. I don’t know how much luck I have.” 

Lukas shakes his head. “Come here,” he says. Philip steps forward and Lukas pulls him in, a finger hooked in his belt loop, kissing him deep and slow. “You have no idea how lucky you make me feel,” he says quietly when they pull apart. 

Philip laughs. “Seriously, what’s with you today? You’re acting so weird. It’s kind of nauseating.” 

Lukas slaps him lightly on the face. “I’m just feeling good, Philip. Just feeling good,” he says, shoving his helmet back on and riding off towards the jump. 

Philip holds his breath watching him. Lukas picks up speed and starts up the ramp and just when Philip thinks he’s going to stop, he doesn’t. He’s in the air, over the water, and then he’s touching down on the other side. Philip lets out a loud involuntary whoop, jumping up in the air. 

He waits for Lukas to circle back around and when he pulls up, Lukas barely has time to get off the bike before Philip is tackling him, throwing his arms around his neck. “Holy shit,” Philip is saying into his shoulder. “You did that.” 

Lukas laughs, pushing Philip back so he can look at him. Lukas is smiling so wide his face might actually split in two. “Dude,” is all he can say, breathing heavily, both of his hands on Philip’s shoulders. 

“How did it feel?” Philip asks. He catches Lukas’ contagious smile and feels like he’s going to float right up into the sun any minute now. 

“Amazing,” Lukas says. “It felt like- You know what it felt like?” His hands are on Philip’s face now, fingers pushing into his hair. “I’m gonna be weird and nauseating again, ready?” Philip nods eagerly, biting down on his lip to try and suppress his smile just a little bit. “It felt kind of like the first time I saw you slouching into Mrs. Miller’s English class and I was thrilled and terrified and, like, finally understanding this buried part of myself. Just kind of free all of the sudden. That’s what it felt like.” 

Philip feels his cheeks going hot. He isn’t sure how Lukas went from the kid punching him in the face at school to this guy who loves him and constantly makes him blush. “Shut up,” he says, pushing Lukas. 

But Lukas doesn’t budge. He’s still got Philip’s face in his hands and he kisses him and keeps kissing him until Philip can hardly breathe. He forces himself to pull back to catch his breath. “Um,” he is panting against Lukas’ mouth, eyes still closed. “We should go somewhere. Celebrate.” 

Lukas laughs, kissing him again. “I think my dad’s on his way down to Poughkeepsie by now. Should be gone for a few hours.” 

“Perfect,” Philip says. “Let’s go.” 

They still have so many things to overcome, so many wounds that need healing, so many fears that need conquering, but this one victory makes them feel triumphant and invincible and Philip puts his hands over Lukas’ heart on the ride back to his house and he feels good.


End file.
